The Cave
by antoninya
Summary: Amy Benson knows that she saw something in the dark. She confronts Tom Riddle about it when he's home for the holidays.


The slow thaw of the dwindling days of March is the first sign that summer is on the way, when the frozen wasteland of the grounds becomes a little less grey. The piles of dirt-swirled ice crystals have not yet begun to melt where they sit on the edge of the roads where the repetition of shovelling have tampered them down into solid lumps, but the frost-veined mud is pock-marked with green sprouts.

The first sign of the encroaching summer temperature is not only a reminder that warmer, brighter days are ahead, but the cue for a restlessness to creep under the skin of children, the universal longing for days spent out of doors, turning slowly browner under blue skies. The onward march of the year, days sliding into memory, each one being crossed off on the calendar that hangs in the dining room, counting closer and closer to the middle of July, toward where the waves crash against the cliffs.

Amy Benson knows that she saw something in the darkness there, something that should not have been possible outside of motion pictures and the tattered, hard-worn copies of novels filled with princes and magic spells, faeries and princesses with hair of woven gold, and orphans. Plucky, heart of gold orphans with freckles splashed across upturned noses, who get everything they ever wanted by the time the last page is turned and the author's hand spells out the happy end.

She corners Tom Riddle in his room the day after he's returned from whatever school he disappears to in September. He sits on his bed, leaning against the headboard, ankles crossed. He is so engrossed in a darkly-bound book with faded gilt letters that seem to shimmer and dance before her eyes that he only notices her when she closes the door behind her with a click. His hand twitches, moving from the book to the stick of wood that sits on his night stand, in a reaction that seems as natural to him as breathing.

He smiles at her in that slow way that he has, always thinking everything through first. Calculating.

"You did something to me," she says, moving equally slowly. "In that cave."

He only looks mildly interested. "Did I?"

"Yes."

The smile changes, becomes the one he puts on for Mrs. Cole, the one he puts on when visitors come. He closes the book and slides off of his bed, standing up. He's grown since Amy's last seen him, ten months ago. He's a head taller than her now, but she stands her ground.

Tom Riddle looks at her, his head tilted to the side, eyes narrowed. "Are you starting to remember?" His voice is soft.

"Remember what?" Amy meets his eyes and it's the second biggest mistake that she's ever made in her life. The first one was following Tom Riddle into that cave.

There was a body in that cave, all bones with bits of flesh and muscle and other human tissue clinging like leaves in a summer storm, barely holding on this late in the process of decomposition. There was a body in the cave, and it _moved_.

She remembers shrieking to stop it, she remembers Dennis yelling and screaming and tears everywhere. She remembers how the body smelled when it grabbed onto her and she tripped and fell and then the body was on top of her like a cage and -

Amy Benson reels back from Tom Riddle, clawing to the surface of the present, a scream caught in her throat.

"What the hell are you?" She pushes the words through numb lips. She makes a break for the door, but he's too fast. He's always been too fast. The door is closed, and he has a stick in one hand and his other is wrapped around Amy's throat and his teeth are bared.

He doesn't look human with the strange, red glint in his eyes. He is so very close to her face and she's finding it hard to breathe.

Then, everything changes again.

Amy Benson knows that she saw something, but she's not sure what. She sits in her room and reads the tattered, hard-worn copies of novels filled with princes and magic spells, faeries and princesses with hair of woven gold, and plucky, heart of gold orphans. She reads them while lying on her bed. She rests of her stomach, elbows propped up and the book on her pillow. She lies facing the door to her room so she can see people walking by.

Tom Riddle walks by, and something makes her mind itch. She thinks of the seaside and wonders when this year's trip will be. She's always liked the seaside. Just not the caves.

And she doesn't know why.


End file.
